Targeting your audience to maximize Google+

Yesterday we went over some of the differences between Google+ and the other social networks that are out there and we will continue our series on Google+ today with a topic that is a bit bigger than social media marketing. Like any type of marketing, it’s important to identify who your ideal client or customer is so you can target them on Google+.

Here are the basic questions you want to answer in order to define your target market:

Are your customers in your local area or do you sell nationally?

Is there a specific niche that represents your ideal customer?

Are there demographics that define this niche?

Using the example of a local exercise studio let’s answer some of these questions in order to demonstrate how the process works. Let’s say this studio is not part of a chain so they are only targeting their immediate area, let’s say a 20 mile radius from the studio. That’s the first demographic of geography. Next, your studio offers yoga, Zumba, personal training and massages but doesn’t have any free weights or body building machines or classes, so the majority of your clientele will be women. The studio offers classes both during the day and in the evenings so you have both the stay-at-home mom and working mom crowds.

Now you have a basic idea about who your prospect is but you can take it one step further by creating an “avatar” of this person. Actually create one person who represents your ideal customer. In this scenario, we would have a woman who is probably mid-30’s to mid-50’s with some expendable income. She is probably into fashion since she is interested in exercising, presumably to stay fit and looking young.

You can continue this exercise for hours, but once you have the basic picture, you can begin to form your marketing plan around that person. Where she travels, both online and off, what other types of products and services she likes to buy, what her friends are up to, etc. Now you have real tools available to target this avatar and find out where she’s hanging out online and then you can hang out there, too.

But before you can do that, you need to have both your personal profile and business page set up on Google+. This will be covered in Friday’s webinar so be sure to register for that now. Don’t worry, if you can’t attend Friday at 2pm, make sure you register and I will send you the replay on Monday.

Tomorrow’s blog will cover Google+ Circles feature since this is unique to this network and is incredibly powerful when you know how to use them.